The best slings and harnesses for the weeks after knee surgery

Your dog comes home from knee surgery with a shaved leg, a cone, a bag of medication and a sheet of instructions that turns the next two months into a very small life: a crate or a small room, short trips outside on a leash to go to the bathroom, and nothing else. The part people plan least for is the walk from the back door to the grass, over whatever floor is in the way. That is the trip the discharge sheets want supported, and a sling is the tool for it.

One rule runs through this whole page. Your surgeon's discharge instructions come first. Hospitals differ on how long the restrictions last, whether stairs are allowed and when a sling can be put away, and the surgeon who repaired your dog's knee is the only person who knows what that knee can take. Everything below is gear that supports those instructions. If anything here disagrees with what your surgeon told you, do what the surgeon said.

What the discharge instructions actually say

The American College of Veterinary Surgeons (ACVS) page on cranial cruciate ligament disease describes the main repairs, TPLO, TTA, CBLO, the lateral suture and TightRope, and is plain about what follows all of them: "Activity must be restricted for several weeks after surgery to ensure that there are no complications with implants or healing." The University of Missouri's Veterinary Health Center explains why in its TPLO handout: until the bone heals, the plate and screws are the main things holding the tibia stable, "so resting the dog after surgery is critically important."

We read what three veterinary schools and a specialty surgery practice publish about home care after cruciate surgery. They are not identical, and that is the point:

Read across the rows and the shape is the same everywhere: a confined dog, a short leash, bathroom trips and nothing more, with a sling for the surfaces where a slip is likely. The details, eight weeks or three months, stairs never or stairs with a sling, change from hospital to hospital. That is why your own sheet decides.

What a sling is for in those first weeks

VCA's page on TPLO says about half of dogs begin walking on the operated leg within 24 hours of surgery, and that by two weeks most bear moderate to complete weight on it. So in the first days, many dogs are not yet putting full weight on the operated leg. That is the dog you are walking across a kitchen floor to the back door.

A sling does two jobs on those trips. It lets you take some weight at the back and steady the dog where the floor is slick, which is exactly where the Missouri and Madison instructions call for one. And it gives you a second point of control besides the leash. GingerLead's listing, for example, says its lead can be hooked to a collar for younger dogs recovering from orthopedic surgery, and its website pitches that as speed control. That matters because the Madison sheet asks you to keep walks slow so the operated leg is used with every step, and a dog that wants to hurry to the grass is hard to slow with a collar alone.

What a sling is not for, after surgery, is carrying the dog around. The instructions above are about short, supported walking, not avoiding it. If you find yourself lifting most of your dog's weight on every trip, tell the surgical team; it is information they want. For the lift itself, our guide to lifting a large dog safely covers where your hands go and how to spare your back, and managing a big dog when you cannot lift is written for owners without much strength to spare.

Set up the house before the dog comes home

A confined rest area. The instructions above confine the dog when you are not watching it: Missouri to a cage, Texas A&M whenever the dog is unsupervised. VCA's general post-operative advice is a soft, clean bed in a quiet, draft-free room. If a crate is the plan, the bedding problem is specific: flat support foam cut to the tray, with no rim to climb over. Our orthopedic crate pad picks cover exactly that.

The route to the door. Walk the path your dog will take four or five times a day, from the rest area to the grass, and look at the floor. Laminate, glazed tile and polished wood are the kind of slick surfaces the discharge sheets mean. Runners or rubber-backed rugs along that one route are cheap and take an afternoon. Our page on which floors are worst for a dog explains why the floor that looks safe often is not.

Stairs. Missouri's instructions rule out stairs for eight weeks; the Madison sheet uses the sling on stairs in the first two. If your house has steps between the rest area and the outside, ask your surgeon which rule applies before the day of surgery, because the answer changes where the dog sleeps. Either way, gate the flights your dog should not attempt alone. The gate at the top of a staircase has to screw into the wall; our stair gate guide explains which gate goes where. If a few steps are unavoidable and your surgeon allows them with a sling, non-slip stair treads add grip to every step.

Furniture. Missouri, Florida and Madison all rule out jumping, and the Madison sheet keeps jumping on and off high furniture, such as a high bed, off limits even in weeks 8 to 12. Close the bedroom door, block the sofa, and settle the question of the bed before your dog tests it.

Belly sling or full-body harness?

For most dogs after a single knee repair, a belly sling is the right tool. It slides under the abdomen in seconds, takes weight off the back end, and comes off when you are back inside. Our sling versus harness comparison sets out the general difference. After knee surgery, a full-body harness with front and rear handles earns its extra cost in three situations:

• A big dog. With a belly sling all of your control is at the back end. A heavy dog that lunges at the door or stumbles on the step is easier to steady with a handle at the shoulders as well.
• Arthritis elsewhere. Missouri's handout says a dog will always have arthritis in the repaired knee. If your dog was already stiff or unsteady before the surgery, weak in front or sore in the hips, supporting only the back end leaves you holding half the problem. If hips are the other issue, our guide to helping a dog with hip dysplasia at home covers the day-to-day side.
• The other knee is also suspect. The ACVS page says up to 50 percent of dogs diagnosed with cruciate disease in one knee develop it in the other, usually within 12 to 18 months of diagnosis; the University of Florida says about 30 to 50 percent of dogs rupture both cruciate ligaments within one to two years of each other. If your vet has already raised the other knee, you may be supporting this dog for longer than one recovery, and a harness designed to stay on, with handles at both ends, is money spent over months rather than weeks.

Our full-body harness roundup compares that category in depth. Both full-body picks on this page, the PetSafe CareLift and the Lafoty, name surgery recovery on their listings.

Fit around the incision, the cone and the bathroom trip

We could not locate a veterinary source that says where a sling strap should sit relative to a knee incision, so we are not going to guess. Ask the surgical team at discharge to show you how they want it positioned. If you buy before the surgery date, take the sling with you and ask them to check it on your dog. Ask the same question before you use any design with straps that loop around the back legs, rather than a pad that runs under the belly.

Three practical points apply whichever you buy. First, the cone. Texas A&M's recovery article recommends an e-collar to stop licking and chewing at the incision, so check how the harness goes on: a sling that slides under the belly from the side never goes near the head, while a harness with a chest section may mean working around the cone. Second, the bathroom trip is the whole reason for the sling, so it has to stay clear when your dog goes. For a male dog, look for a cutout or a shield. Third, it will get dirty. Four of the five picks are listed as machine washable or washable; the Lafoty's listing says hand wash only, which is worth knowing before weeks of bathroom trips.

Check the skin under every strap each day. A rub on a dog that is confined and cannot move away from it gets worse quickly; our guide to harness rubbing and slipping covers the fixes.

What we scored these on

• Support where the recovery needs it. Rear support for a typical single-knee repair; both ends for the big dog, the arthritic dog and the dog with a second suspect knee.
• Control at a slow walk. A long lead or a leash attachment you can use to keep the pace down, on top of the short leash the discharge sheets require.
• The bathroom trip. Whether the listing says it stays clear for urinating and defecating, and whether there is a cut for male dogs.
• Getting it on a sore dog. How much handling it takes, for a dog in a cone that is not yet using one leg.
• Washable, and useful afterward. Whether it survives weeks of daily wear, and whether it still has a job once the restrictions end.

Scores are judgments from the live listings, the manufacturers' own pages and the veterinary instructions cited at the foot of this page, in line with our methodology. We have not used any of these slings or harnesses on a dog. Where a size or feature appears, it is the manufacturer's and the copy says so.

The short version: the GingerLead for most dogs after a knee repair, because its maker designs and markets it for exactly this. The PetSafe CareLift if your dog is big, arthritic elsewhere, or has a second knee your vet is watching. The Coodeo if you want something quick that can stay on for bathroom trips at a lower price. The Lafoty for a large male dog, if your surgeon is happy with straps around the back legs. The LOOBANI as the budget backup.